Mark Ogden is the Telegraph's Northern Football Correspondent.

Liverpool vs Manchester United: how it all started with a ship

Ever wanted to know why Liverpool-Manchester United games mean so much more than three points to their supporters?

It is the biggest fixture in the Premier League. Forget Chelsea-Arsenal, United versus City, Liverpool-Everton, even Blackburn versus Burnley, nothing matters quite so much as Liverpool against Manchester United.

That statement alone will rile supporters of every other club in the country. If you are a Bury supporter, then your derby game against Rochdale matters more to you than whatever happens at Anfield or Old Trafford. Quite right, too.

All derbies are about more than football. It is usually about the pride of two towns or regions that is played out over 90 minutes.

But Liverpool versus Manchester United still means more than the rest. It is about football, music, industry, dominance.

Well-informed Liverpool supporters claim that the presence of a ship on United’s club crest emphasises just why the men from Old Trafford are, and always have been, the enemy at Anfield.

The ship represents the Manchester Ship Canal, which was built by industrialists in Manchester in the late-nineteenth century to enable them to transport goods directly into the city’s docks rather than pay the portmasters of Liverpool for the privilege.

The theory goes that the Ship Canal sparked Liverpool’s decline as a city and the moment that Manchester began its development and growth into the influential and confident city that it is today.

Mancunians tend not to recognise its significance, but it is remains a thorny issue on Merseyside.

Still, until last season, Liverpool could at least claim to have won the league title more than any other club.

That distinction went with United’s eleventh Premier League title last term, though, and the two clubs are now level on 18 titles. A win for United on Sunday will all but end Liverpool’s hopes of making it 19 this season, but it will consolidate United’s own prospects of an unprecedented fourth successive championship.

All of a sudden, football is imitating life for Liverpool supporters. The rise of the Ship Canal over 100 years ago, the emergence of ‘Madchester’ in the 1980s and 1990s that regained some of the ground lost to Beatlemania and now United, on the brink of becoming the most successful team in the history of English league football.

Throw in all of the money being spent by Manchester City and the threat they pose to Liverpool’s hopes of Champions League qualification, it appears as though the scoreline already reads ‘Mancs 1 Scousers 0’ before a ball has even been kicked on Sunday.

By 4pm, however, pride, hope and belief might just have returned to the banks of the Mersey.